The God-Band

[ton321]

A blue plastic strip, clipped onto my wrist,
“is two-fingers loose enough? “ -yes, yes it is.

At the all inclusive bar, a customer quipped,
“this is my God-band I point at the bar,
to pay for any drink until I’m pissed.


At the hospital, the same strip on your father,
with writing on it-this time, not the sky blue
of holidays and endless white sand,

free drinks at the bar with a curve of the wrist
like spiderman squirting his spider web thing,

I can feel his body shaking as I lift him up
from chair to bed, the familiar iron grip,

even now as cancer has ravaged him,
tired from shouting and repeating myself three times

but something slower and softer
that trickles through the hand.

[jisbell00]

I'm not sure this one works. Sorry not to be more positive.

Cheers,
John

[ton321]

No problem, John. Thanks for responding and I agree too

Tony

[jisbell00]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for taking my comment in stride. I could have been more explanatory, so here goes. I think for me as one reader, this poem just doesn't crystallize on the page as your poems generally do. It has a lot going on and in the end, its constituent parts pull away from each other centrifugally. It's a problem I run into routinely, but I don't often see it in your work. The bit about your father is powerful, as it inevitably will be. I am sorry he is going through that, and you with him.

Cheers,
John

[ton321]

Thanks John for taking the time to explain. It's about my father -in law, but that doesn't really alter anything. The whole idea of the piece came from a mixture of ideas, of being on all inclusive holidays with that blue band where you could point your wrist at any beverege you liked, and when another time some one asked if the band was for a hospital or a festival, so the whole thing seemed to stick in my mind. I'll sit on it for a while,

Tony